January 17, 2024

Hi everybody, welcome to my blog where I talk about my past. My friend here is now going to go to one of my suitcases and grab a diary. She’ll open it up to a page. I’ll include a copy here and talk about it.

So, my friend here got one of my diaries and opened up to this page.

So my dad was pretty awesome. He taught me how to ride horses, shoot, go camping, fishing, drive. All that sort of stuff. This drawing is from a camping trip he took me on. We rode one week into Wyoming and then one week back into Montana. I talked about it before in one of my previous blogs, but it was pretty awesome. The only problem was that my knees hurt like hell. When you don’t ride so often, the pain gets to you. Plus, I didn’t have any Tylenol or advil . The only thing I had was Jack Daniels. That seemed to work, but the horseback riding was not so good after that.

It was an amazing trip. One of my best memories was when we would stop for lunch, the animals around weren’t used to seeing people, so they just came right up to you. It was very cool. Birds would land next to me. Squirrels would come right up to me. Thank God there were no bear around! We saw markings from bear, but never saw any bear.

On the trip, I carried two cameras with me. One with a 35 mm lens and the other with a 50 mm lens. They were all Leica's. I’ll include a photo I took on this trip. It was a great memory. Oh yeah, my horseback riding is just OK, the real rider in my family is my sister. It was a great camping trip. I highly suggest you do it if you can. The name of the company is: Press Stephens Outfitters (http://www.pressstephensoutfitting.com). Check it out.

That’s all for this week. I’m gonna keep it short. Check out the photo. It’s pretty cool.

Love, B. Nice

December 26, 2023

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.

Hey! Happy Boxing Day. It’s December 26th, The day after Christmas. Boxing Day. I learned what Boxing Day is from my first wife. She was British. You see, imagine places like Downton Abbey. The Staff would have Christmas Day the day after Christmas. They called it Boxing Day. They had to work over Christmas, but they had their day after Christmas. Just a little trivia for you.

Above is a photograph of one of my camera cases. It was one of 14 pieces of luggage I carried with me on my jobs. It kind of shows how crazy my life was. I initially learned to do this from a photographer I worked for in New York City. It’s a good way for your bags to stand out at the airport baggage claim. It’s kind of hard for someone to run off with your bag when it looks like this, not to mention that it is a little heavy. It was fun though. It was a record of where I’ve been. Some stickers when I see them bring joy, but other stickers make my stomach flip around. Either way, it was a good measure of my life. Man, when I look at it, each sticker has a story. I’ll just pick one out for now.

There’s a sticker of France there. Man I loved it there. I lived in France for a couple of years. I did the starving young artist thing. I did a lot of editorial, magazine work, but made no money. There was the odd advertising or catalog job here or there. But most of my jobs were magazine work, and paid no money. It was a great lifestyle though. I got to meet some amazing people. Go to some amazing places. It was like a long party there. I’ll tell you, now I see why the editors at the magazine stay at the magazine so long. They had a great lifestyle. We went to great restaurants, great locations. And on top of it all, they got paid well for it. I get it now. The editors always liked to work with young talent. I was kind of the same. I liked to work with new people. Their enthusiasm was always intoxicating. I kind of still live like that now. It’s a good vibe working with new people. The established talent are always a bit difficult and prima donna-like.

I think I told you this story before, but I had to get a photograph of a model jumping off a pier into the water. Well the model enthusiastically jumped off the pier. She didn’t reappear, She went straight to the bottom. I said, “Holy shit!” threw all my equipment to my assistant and jumped in after her. I pulled her up to the top and I said, Oh man, do you know how to swim?! She said No! and I said, why did you jump in? She replied, well…I wanted to get a good shot for you. Now that’s dedication, and a prima donna wouldn’t do that.

Love, B. Nice

December 12, 2023

Hi you guys. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.

The above cartoon I did is pretty much true. It applies to my past and my present. My life basically. You gotta keep moving forward, and on another note, never look back. That applies to surfing, running, relationships. Wait..I have to think about that for a minute. Anyway, don’t look back.

When I was a fashion photographer, I always had about four projects under my belt. Four stories I would have going on. For example, one story I had in the works was all about pointing. It was cool. Everything was in black and white. I shot with my Leica. They were basically images of people pointing at things. Now, a project like this takes about four years. So I had a few projects going on at the same time.

Right before my brain bleed, I was working on pointing, gangs, dogs and their celebrity owners, looking out the airplane window. I had big ideas, but, like they say, whenever you make plans, God laughs.

That’s it for this week. I’m gonna make it a short blog. If you’re an artist, keep painting, taking pictures, working with your fabrics like my friend here, or whatever you do. Keep moving forward.

Love, B. Nice

December 5, 2023

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.

Above is a drawing I did from a vacation I had. You see, I used to live in Paris. I would take the bullet train to the south of France and then bike in that area. It was cool, cause you’d bike to a castle or a chateau, eat and drink and then bike off again the next day. It was a great way to see the countryside, and we stayed in very cool chateaux and castles. Man, if I were you, I would try and do it. You don’t feel so guilty having two bottles of wine. You bike it off the next day.

I’ll tell you, I had some good vacations. Like my friend and I were just talking about New Zealand. I would go there every six months (this is when I lived in Australia). I would go there to renew my visa for Australia. I always went to the same spot, Queenstown, NZ. I would drive from Christ Church to Queenstown, It was beautiful views bacaue the last part of the trip was through Milford Sound. The rental car places always encouraged you to take a bus because so many people crash their cars looking at the views. Maybe this is where car insurance came from. Hey, on a side note, did you Know that New Zealand was the first place that allowed women to vote? Pretty cool.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m kind of tired. Oh, on another note, if you ever drive from Christ Church to Queenstown, don’t leave your car unattended in a rest area. They have these birds that look like parrots and they hate rubber, so anything on your car that’s rubber, they will destroy. For example they definitely hate windshield wipers. If you don’t know about it, it’s pretty funny to hear people screaming about their car.

Talk to you next week. Love, B. Nice

November 28, 2023

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.

Man, I ran everywhere when I was a kid. It definitely saved me a couple of times. For example:

When I was little, I lived in Brooklyn Heights on Montague street. I played with a group of kids. This was the mid 60’s. I guess you could call us a little gang. Anyway, we were playing on the back street in back of Montague when a pedophile tried to lure us into his apartment. He had a bunch of candy. One of the kids I was with said, “My Dad told me about people like you!” and we bolted. We ran to the closest police officer we could find. We took him back to the apartment and showed him. The cop called for back up. The next thing you know, they were roughing the guy up pretty good. They took him away in handcuffs and they had a couple of boxes too.

What really started my running career was this, I tried out for the soccer team in high school. The coach said, “Hey Nice! Come over here.” I went over to him. He said, “Brian, I’ve been coaching soccer for 25 years and in that time, you’re probably the worst soccer player I’ve ever seen, but you can run like the wind so go see that guy over there.” and he pointed to the track and field coach. That was the start of my running career.

Running also saved me from the following event. I was in the woods making out with a girl. Imagine that. Anyway, me and this girl saw a guy appear in the distance. The guy stopped. Looked at us, and started running toward us. I said, “Holy shit! Run!” Me and the girl started running as fast as we could. We ran out of the woods through a field and up to my parents house where we hid. I looked out the window, but never saw the guy, so yeah, running saved us.

I’ve got a bunch of running stories, but I’ll tell you one more. I was in Daytona Beach training for Track & Field. It was during spring break and it also happened to be Biker Week. Well, a group of us were running along the beach and we ran past some bikers. They yelled at us, “Hey you faggots.” So of course, I turned around and flipped them off. That wasn’t a good idea, because one of the bikers started running towards me and with one stride he took a knife out of his boot and started coming after me. Well, luckily I could run a 4 minute mile pace and the guy couldn’t catch me. The guy yelled in frustration and ran into the waves. He was definitely tripping on something. Thank god.

But actually, the best run of all was a run I did with eleven other guys. We ran for the Guinness Book of World Records and our school. We ran from Santa Monica, California to the east coast. We got the record. We were in the Guinness book of World Records. We ran 24/7 for 2 weeks. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. But you know what, all that running stuff got me ready for what I’m going through now. Running taught me to turn frustration into determination, to never give up, and to have patience.

That’s all for this week. Love and miss you guys. Love, B. Nice